


In The Mind's Eye

by Wanderbird



Category: Homestuck, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Eldritch Abomination Rose Lalonde, Gen, Minor Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas, Minor Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Summoning, but basically demon summoning, despite the rating level, hints at an assortment of darker stuff, not demon summoning actually, so look out for by-chapter CWs if you're worried
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-14 21:02:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9203054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wanderbird/pseuds/Wanderbird
Summary: The game was over.The game was won. Finally, they had reached the end of this agonizing eternity. So they stood on the platform, and Terezi handed out disguises at Rose's suggestion, but he didn't know why. The hive was green, the light blinding. And then there he stood, in a shady forest in the middle of nowhere, and there was no reception and something clawed him and-- and he was not alone.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Strange Ties, Family Bonds](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1518242) by [whittler_of_words](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whittler_of_words/pseuds/whittler_of_words). 



> Comments make my heart go squee!

 

They were cruising along a desolate stretch of highway when they saw him. A young teenage boy limped along the side of the road, clutching his stomach, clothing torn and coated in a dark, damp stain.  
“Dean.” Sam’s voice was tense. “Dean, do you see that kid? I think he’s hurt.”  
“You really want to pull over and make sure he’s okay? Is that what you were about to say?” Dean glanced over with a faint smirk.  
“Dean, we’re eighty miles in either direction from the nearest town.”  
He blinked. “Okay, yeah, make sure he’s okay and make sure he’s human. Got it.” A moment later, the impala was parked on the shoulder, engine purring. When Sam got out, he could hear the curses the boy was muttering a couple dozen feet away.  
“Hey,” he said, hands open. “Hey, kid, you alright? I’m not gonna hurt you.”  
Dean discreetly pulled out the emf detector, but it registered nothing.  
The muttering increased in volume. “…Fucking bulgesniffing monster, how’d it even get on this planet? And now I’ve got this grubfucking slice to deal with, on top of those gog-damned glowy mortal sprite creatures, and these incompetent idiot humans too. Fuck.” He froze. “fuck.” The boy fell over, clawing at his side, a little pendant on a silver chain falling out of his shirt. Two pendants, actually, hung from the same chain. The first was a green circle with three tentacle things protruding from it, the other a plain iron cancer symbol from the zodiac, tails linked with miniscule lengths of chain.  
Sam sprinted to the kid’s side. “you’re hurt, aren’t you? Let me see, I can help, I promise.”  
“I don’t need fucking help,” the boy seemed to shout despite his strained, breathless state. “I’m not some stupid wriggler, I’ll just follow the road until I get to a town. Fuck off.”  
Dean walked up, shooting his brother a wary look. “The next town’s eighty miles away, so good luck with that. Look, I’ll call an ambulance, and you can just stay here until they arrive. Alright?”  
For some reason, that seemed to panic the child. He glared up at the hunters, grey eyes seeming almost red for a moment. “Fuck no. The last thing I need is to deal with those creepy fucking people, especially if it means I have to stay here any longer than necessary with that shitbleeding werewolf creature on my cherry-colored tail. Get me somewhere with reception and I can always ask Jade to haul me back, I was on my way to fucking meet up with her anyway.”  
It took a moment for the message to sink in.  
“Werewolf?” Dean demanded. “What the hell makes you think there’s a werewolf?”  
“Oh, I don’t know, giant fucking claws and teeth on a humanoid, and a tendency to attack anything that bloody moves? There’s a werewolf, dumbass, and unless I can haul my useless bone plates up and start walking, it’s gonna catch me. Think that counts as a heroic death?”  
“Uhh…” He raised his eyebrows. “I don’t see what that has to do with the werewolf, but okay. Lemme talk to my brother for a second.”  
Their conversation went on in whispers. “I am not letting some random stranger in to make a mess in my car, Sam.”  
“We’re not leaving him here, either. He could pass out any minute, judging by the amount of blood creeping out from behind that kid’s hand.”  
“What happened to calling an ambulance?” Dean glared.  
“No reception, just like he said.” Sam shook his head.  
“Shit.”  
“Fine, how about this? We test this kid with everything we’ve got—holy water, salt, silver, iron, everything. If he’s clean, we let him in. We find a place to camp or a place to drop the kid, and then we give him medical supplies or an ambulance and shank that werewolf. Agreed?”  
“Fine,” Dean grumbled. “but if he gets bloodstains on my baby, you’re cleaning them off.” He stomped back to the Impala.

 

“Alright,” Sam strode up to the boy, rubbing his forehead. “We can’t call ambulance because there’s no reception here.”  
“No shit, fuckass!” The kid muttered, still somehow managing to sound like he was shouting, cross-legged on the muddy ground.  
“My brother here wants to test you for a couple things really quick, but then you can come with us. We have to deal with the werewolf before we can get to town, though, unless there’s a town somewhere along here the town doesn’t know about. I can stitch you up in the car, I have the certifications and the supplies.”  
“I can do that myself, thanks. What kind of useless wriggler do you think I am?”  
“Wriggler?”  
The kid glared. “Look, you asshole. I figured it out a long fucking time ago, nobody’s gonna give me shit, so unless I want to die of some stupid gog-damned infection or something, I’d better be able to clean myself up on my own. I can pay you back for the supplies when I get to town.”  
Dean finally showed back up, an assortment of objects in hand as Sam left to get the medical kit.  
“What’s your name, kid?” He asked gruffly.  
Grey eyes arrowed into him with almost physical force. “Karkat,” the kid finally answered.  
“Got a last name so the cops can find your parents?” Weird name, Dean noted.  
For once, Karkat seemed to grin with a smile only an inch from that of a serious carnivore. “Parents? Jegus am I glad he isn’t, that insufferable prick.”  
“Who?”  
“Kankri.”  
At that, Dean actually felt confused. “your name is Karkat Kankri? Hell of a name for anyone to wish on their kid.”  
The grin turned to a growl. “Kankri is not my fucking ‘parent’, he’s my d—my ances—some grubsauce-stuffed bulgesniffing know-it-all. I don’t have parents.”  
“So they’re dead. But your last name is… Kankri?” The hunter stifled a laugh despite the situation.  
“No, you fucker. My last name is v—my last name is Vega.”  
So the kid was trying to hide his identity. And who even was that Kankri person? Dean actually found himself hoping Karkat had a legitimate line of reasoning there. For a loud, insulting child with no apparent volume control, Dean was actually kind of starting to like him. He set down the pile of stuff he was carrying, and grabbed the holy water. Splash.  
“What the grubfucking hell?” Karkat jumped. “why in this entire, beating, incomprehensible universe did you do that? Never mind, I don’t even want to know.”  
So the holy water was a negative. So, upon further testing, were the silver, iron, and salt, though convincing the kid to let himself be cut was another ear-piercing argument. When they finished, Sam handed Karkat the medical kit.  
“Do you want any help with that?”  
“I already told you thinkpan-dead idiots I can handle myself, fucking thanks.” Karkat snatched the plastic box.

 

The Impala was filled with awkward silence as they cruised back toward where the werewolf had been sighted, interrupted only by occasional hisses of pain from Karkat as he stitched shut the clawmarks lacerating his side. A tense remark from Sam broke the silence.  
“You seem… comfortable with this.”  
“You mean with sewing up my own fucking side? Or with hitching rides from strangers that want to fucking slice me open with two different knives before letting me in?”  
Sam sighed. “The first, though I guess they’re both true. Well?”  
“You h—you people have ridiculously soft lives, if that’s the case. But I guess I already knew that, from watching that idiot Egbert.”  
“Egbert?” Dean piped up.  
“None of your fucking business, fuckass.”  
The older brother growled under his breath. “Look, kid, we’re just trying to figure out who you are so we can get you somewhere safe when we get back to town, okay? You’re just a kid, or a teenager at best, you’re supposed to have somebody taking care of you.”  
“I already told you who I am, you moron,” Karkat snapped. “And I can take care of myself.”  
“Fine. Do you know how to take out a werewolf?”  
“Silver, I’d assume, but fuck if I know. I bet incineration would work too.”  
“Can you shoot?” At Karkat’s snort and affirmative response, Dean’s eyebrows shot up. “How’d you learn?”  
“A particularly pompous friend of mine with a legendary piece of shit, to borrow Strider’s words. If he knew I was ever going to use a fucking rifle on my own, I bet he’d flip his impeccably high-blooded, classist shit, the asshole.”  
This only raised more questions. “Why? Rifles aren’t precisely reserved for the rich.”  
Karkat hesitated. “Whatever. Yeah, I know how to shoot a fucking gun, and not just rifles either.”  
The adults exchanged a glance. This fucking kid.  
“I’ve got a silver sickle, too, in case of melee combat.” He touched his side gently before extracting a length of bandage from the medical kit.  
“Geez, Karkat, you sound like you’re playing a game or something. ‘Melee combat’ is a hell of a lot more dangerous than you think, and besides, you’re injured.” Sam peered over his shoulder. “You get a gun just in case, but you’d better stay out of combat so you don’t get hurt.” He jumped as Karkat’s eyes seemed to flash red again.  
“FUCK. THAT.” The hand not holding the bandage in place clenched. “I’m not some gog-damned baby you need to shepherd around. Yeah, fine, I’ll stay out of close quarters if I can, but I’m not going to FUCKING stay behind like a dead weight again.”  
There was a pause as Sam rubbed his ears. “What do you mean, again?”  
“...” Karkat studied the ground for a good several seconds before muttering a response. “None of your fucking business.”  
Touchy story, huh? Or it was just the kid being his apparently usual cranky self again? Damn it, would he just open up already? “Are you always this cranky, kid?” Dean asked lightly.  
He actually smiled slightly. “You fucking bet. Long story mostly full of highblood hoofbeastshit, so fuck that.”

 

“This place is what, two miles from where you found that werewolf?” Sam stretched, hands brushing the roof of the car.  
Karkat nodded, slouched in the backseat wearing an old, oversized white t-shirt instead of his own bloodstained dark grey sweater. “Or from where it found me.” The sun was setting, the Impala parked off the side of the road where its black carapace blended with the shadows.  
Dean slung an arm over his backrest. “How’d you get out here anyway? Were you hitchhiking or something?”  
“Nope. I was—“ he paused, choosing his next words carefully. “I was with my friends, we’d finally won that FUCKING game, and then… And then I woke up alone in a forest in the middle of fucking nowhere.” Karkat’s voice was strained, his messy head turned away into the car seat. “At least Rose had the foresight to get TZ to make us all these ugly fucking necklaces first.”  
Dean raised an eyebrow. “Necklaces? Like that thing you’re wearing?”  
There was a pause. “Yep. They’ve got all of our… contact information in them. Of course, that might be fucking messed up now, too.”  
“So you knew something like this might happen. What sort of game were you even playing?” Sam let out a puff of air.  
“Fuck if I thought this would happen. Rose just knows shit she doesn’t tell us all, and TZ’s not much better. And then we win, we finally claim our gog-forsaken prize, head inside and all of a sudden everything’s going ass over fucking teakettle.” The kid’s arms reached up to clutch his shoulders, but he turned to face forward again. “I woke up with a migraine the size of a fucking planet, picked a direction and started walking, then got pounced on by that crazy shitty grimdark Jademonster. How long do you think it’ll be until it gets here?”  
“You said it was following you, right?” Dean asked.  
“From what I can tell,” answered Karkat. “Don’t fucking ask me why.”  
“I don’t know. Shouldn’t be too long, maybe a couple hours. As soon as we figure out where it is, we move out of the car, though. I don’t want my baby getting scratched up by a werewolf.”  
 “Yeah, yeah,” the kid rolled his eyes. “I get it, you care about your—HOPY FUCKING SHIT!” A large, serene man in a trenchcoat appeared beside him with a rustling of wings, causing Karkat to nearly jump out of his skin.  
Dean glanced up at the angel. “Cas, this is Karkat. Karkat, this is our friend Castiel, who really should know better than to appear out of fucking nowhere already.”  
Castiel gave the hunter a look of gentle incomprehension. “I do not understand why my flight is so unnerving.”  
A sickle appeared in Karkat’s hand, his face pale as he scrambled away from the angel. “What the fuck do you even want, you fucking Davesprite knockoff? And how the HELL do you fit in here with your giant gog-damned wings?! Can you people just stay the FUCK away from me already?!?”  
“I do not understand.”  
Sam stared. “Wings? You can see Castiel’s wings? I can’t see them. Even Dean can’t, most of the time.”  
“Of course I can fucking see them! They’re bigger than this entire bulge-sniffing car and glowy as shit! Even though they’re black! The fucking assface looks just like a brighter version of Davesprite, only without the glasses and not impaled through the digestion tubes! He’s like Eridan’s fucking consorts from LOWAA that he insisted on killing! He’s another shitbleeding angel! And you fucking know him? I am not going to FUCKING deal with the monsters of Alter—my culture’s fairy tales! He’s going to try and fucking kill me, if those stories have any truth to them. Maybe that wet cluckbeast Eridan was actually right about something for once, even though the fuckers didn’t even drop any grist, maybe his retarded fucking genocidal tendencies were actually useful there!” Karkat’s hand fumbled for the latch on the door.   
“I apologize for any alarm my appearance may cause. How can you see my true form? You are not one of the Chosen, and even so, you should not see it in circumstances such as these unless I so will.” Cas rumbled.  
“You’ve talked to angels before?” Sam demanded. “And you’ve killed angels?”  
“Monsters?! What kind of culture are you even from, kid?” Dean’s voice was incredulous.  
Karkat’s hands only trembled and grew clumsier under the bombardment of questions. Finally, he dropped his other sickle on the seat and pried the door open with both hands, grabbing his weapons before launching himself out the door onto legs still shaky from his earlier injury. His voice was strained. “You know what,” he announced, “I am not going to do this right now, not ever. I am going to start walking again on my own and deal with the werewolf whenever it decides to FUCKING show, but I am not going to try and explain all this shit to you asshats who are apparently entirely lacking thinkpans. And Castiel, if you or any of your crappily-rendered angel buddies come after me, I will destroy you. I have, I still have the code for Eridan’s fucking rifle and that stupid portable half-dead alchemiter, so you won’t even be as invulnerable as your fuckers normally are.” The kid was shaking in his boots, fear only thinly veiled by fury.  
Sam got out of the car, palms out. “Kid. It’s okay, I don’t know what your problem is, but it’s okay. Cas won’t hurt you, we won’t hurt you, we’re only trying to help. What’s wrong? We can try and hold off on the questions for now, okay? Just listen to me, and tell me what’s wrong.”  
Karkat shook his head as he backed up. “I didn’t, I didn’t kill them, Eridan did, because he’s a fucking idiot. I may have had a weird fucking wrigglerhood, but I heard the same stories as everyone else. The same stories. Angels are bad. They’re like fucking sunlight, the real ones.” The anger was slowly starting to cement itself a little more firmly. “Their presence burns. Their slightest glance kills. If they were real, and if they got the fucking chance, they would slaughter every single shitfucking one of us, from the most pathetically useless grub to the Condesce herself. We all heard about them. Except Aradia, maybe, but she was already dead.” The kid ran into a tree and clutched it with clawlike hands. “Fuck, I shouldn’t be telling you people this, you’ll just murder me too, you’re fucking hunters. Fuck. And I’m just sitting here springing an acrobatic fucking pirouette off the handle to land sprawling on my miserable fucking face.” He slid to the mossy ground, muffling his head in his arms. “Fuck.”  
Castiel was beside Sam in an instant, and took a few confident strides forward to kneel before the panicking kid.  
Karkat glared up at him. His hands tensed on the handles of his sickles as Castiel’s eyes bored into him. “Fuck,” the kid muttered, “your eyes are nearly as blue as John’s are.”  
Eyes locked on the kid, Castiel slowly raised a hand to Karkat’s forehead. Time seemed to stop. Sam watched from a dozen feet away as the angel’s finger touched the boy’s head—and a blaze of light seared across his vision. All he could see was the blinding gold emanating from behind a pair of shadowy wings, and beyond that, beyond that, was… the brilliant light faded, leaving only afterimages as Cas stepped back, shock written plainly on his face. Karkat was standing with a very nearly fanged snarl etched on his mouth but looked as human as ever.  
“WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO!?”  
Cas stared at the kid. “I… I must take my leave, and contemplate what I have just learned.” With a rustle of wings, he disappeared.

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

The angel was gone. Karkat trembled, fists clenched, teeth appearing almost pointed in his grimace. His eyes flicked to the stunned hunters. “Fuck you assholes,” he snarled. “Fuck you, fuck your tests and your ludicrously retarded compassion, and fuck your stupid fucking condescending attit—“  
A blur of grey interrupted the beginning of the tirade as a pair of claws grabbed him. Sam and Dean barely had time to see the blood welling from those deadly fingertips before Karkat was out of sight, yelling curses all the way.

  
        “Shit.” Sam stared at the mangled bush beside the tree Karkat had been leaning against, spattered with blood as it was. “That thing is fast.”  
Dean strode up to the spot, finally out of the car. “At least it looks like we can track it, judging by the state of that bush. Damn.”

  After about two hours, the hunters stood hidden by a bush outside what looked like an old, run-down house. Their voices were sensibly lowered to avoid detection, but their tense whispers betrayed some sort of argument.  
“Sam! We don’t even know what this kid is, you saw Cas’s reaction!”  
“Yeah, but whatever he is, do you really want him dead? And given that the werewolf fucking grabbed him instead of just mauling him on the spot, I don’t know that Karkat’s going to get killed anytime soon. I think there’s something else in there, someone else planning on using him. Werewolves don’t normally take captives.”  
“It probably didn’t, just hauled Karkat off somewhere to kill him where there weren’t a couple of friggin’ hunters looming.”  
“Then why didn’t we find a body?” Sam glared. “Karkat’s not dead, and even if he is, this werewolf and whoever may or may not be controlling it need to be dealt with. This is where they are.”  
Dean let out a huff of breath. “Fine.”  
“Where who is?”  
The boys jumped and turned, each pulling out a gun in one smooth motion. About a foot behind them stood a freakishly pale boy with white hair, round sunglasses perched on his nose despite it being the middle of the night. He had a surprisingly small reaction to the deadly weapons pointed at his face, given that he simply raised his hands and leaned back a little.  
“Dudes. Chill. I’m just looking for my friend. Short, grumpy, swears at everybody at the top of his lungs using weird insults like bulgesniffer and stuff like that. You seen him? My name’s Dave, by the way.” Dave’s clothes were really even weirder than his face. He wore what looked like bright red pajamas, with a pale gear on the front of the shirt and a dark red cape, hood off. Who the fuck wears bright red in a forest? Hell, who manages to sneak up on a couple of already sneaking hunters while wearing bright red in a fucking forest?  
The guns didn’t move. “A werewolf got him. We’re going after the thing.”  
Dave grinned. “A werewolf? I guess that makes sense, we do have Jade, after all. Karkat’s probably not dead, though, he’s pretty tough. Shit takes a swing on him and just kinda, like, bounces off with a sad little boink, like a fucking yarn ball or something. It’s not like he has a dream self to bounce off to anyway, so shit probably just bounces, right? Off his weird-ass bone plates or whatever, like a little kid jumping on manta ray at the aquarium and the manta ray’s just like, shit, kid, what the fuck are you doing cause he’d just, like, sink or something. I’m coming to help you guys, I guess.”  
Sam lowered his gun. “No, you’re not. You’re a kid, and we’re not having another kid die because we let him help us. You’re going to stay out of this.”  
“I’m sixteen.”  
“You’re a kid.”  
Dave sighed. “I’m the goddamned Knight of—shit I can’t tell you that. I’m a goddamned knight, I know my way around a fucking sword, okay? I can fight, I’ll be fine.”  
“Werewolf. You need silver, and swords are stupid in a fight.” Dean grunted.  
“Not the way I use ‘em.” The kid smirked. “And Caledscratch’ll work just fine, that legendary piece of shit Davesprite made it from probably had some silver in it, and could apparently even kill Lord English, that pool-obsessed asshole. It was magic or whatever, some fucking Welsh sword.”   
Sam stared. “Whatever. You’re staying back here and out of the way.”  
“Karkat’s my… my friend, dude. He’s saved my ass so many times before, with all his shitty memos and Trollian, before we were stuck on that fucking meteor. It’s about time I returned the favor.”  
“I understood less than half of that sentence.” Sam rubbed his temples in exasperation. “Besides, if you have this sword, where are you keeping it? I don’t see a scabbard anywhere.”  
“That’s because it’s none of your business, whoever you are.” In Dave’s hands appeared a thick, broken white broadsword with weird antennae-like things coming out of the guard and a turntable in the center.  
Dean tried to hide his jump of surprise. “Where the fuck did that come from? Hate to break it to you, kid, but your sword’s broken.”  
One pale thumb reached to the turntable, and spun it, just a bit. There was a faint white glow around the edges of the sword, and it was whole again. “Got a plan, or do we just charge in?”  
“THERE IS NO WE!” Sam barely managed to keep his voice down. “You’re a kid. You’re going to stay here, and wait for the experienced hunters who actually know what they’re doing to rescue your friend, if he is actually your friend. You are a completely unknown quantity, and as such, you’re staying outside.”  
“Sorry to break it to you, dude,” Dave parroted back, “but nope! Not happenin’.” The kid’s speech had a trace of a Southern accent. “I already told ya, Karkat’s a friend, and friends don’t leave friends to get abducted by fucking werewolves or whatever. A friend especially does not leave that rescue mission in the hands of, like, a couple of complete gog-damned strangers who probably don’t actually give a shit about him. Karkat, I mean. It’s like that whole anti-drugs campaign, man, friends don’t let friends do drugs, but not with drugs.” He glanced up in thought. “I mean, actually I guess it might be about drugs, but not as far as I know, these actual werewolves are just like toothy murdermouths that look like a less human version of Jade, right? They’re like the boss in some shitty detective show, going all pchoo and killing somebody in the first five minutes of every episode, except sometimes when they kill everybody, until they finally manage to get themselves ganked.”  
“Dude.” Sam interrupted. “Stop. Look, I promise my brother and I really do have your friend’s best interests at heart, alright, we’re here to save him. You’re just a little young and inexperienced for this, okay?”  
The glare that Dave levelled at the hunter might’ve set his hair on fire, if it weren’t for the fact that Dave was still wearing his shades. As it was, Sam squirmed in the intent and laser-focused silence of those round patches of darkness.   
Finally, Dean broke the silence with an outtake of breath. “It’s the middle of the night, kid. Dave. Why on earth you wearing sunglasses?” At Dave’s smirk, he shook his head. “Stay right there, kid. My brother and I need to talk.” Dean grabbed his brother’s leather-clad arm in one hand, yanking him a few feet away, careful to stay within line of sight of the kid.  
“I don’t think he’s going to let us go in on our own, Sammie.”  
Sam ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, it doesn’t seem like it. But if he tries to help us deal with that werewolf, he’s just gonna get himself killed!”  
“If we leave him here, he’s just gonna get himself killed. That’s the way things seem to happen in our lives, seriously, and at least he has a weapon.”  
“A weapon and who knows what else,” Sam retorted. “You saw that disappearing trick, we have no idea what he can do, or what he’s willing to do, or even who he is! ‘Dave’ could easily just be a fake name, and even if it isn’t it’s still a pretty damn common one. And he has that sword which he pulled out of thin air, he’s wearing bright red in the middle of a forest, but still managed to sneak up on us, and he hides his eyes. We don’t know anything about this kid, Dean.”  
Dean shifted, eyes darting to one side. “I know, I know, he just—reminds me of myself, okay?”  
“He pulled. A sword. Out of thin. Air. Like, I dunno, magic! Magic bad!”  
“He could be a psychic.”  
“How is that a vote of confidence?!?” Sam hissed. “He could also be a demon! Or a trickster! Or any number of other terrible things that are trying to eat your face! And mine!”  
Dean spread his hands. “I don’t know, man. I feel like we should trust him, and I know, all that stuff is true, and I know that’s a pretty damn stupid thing to do, but I’m pretty sure we have something in common with him. I have something I common with him. When he said he was a knight of something-or-other, I really do think he is, I swear, Sam.”  
The other hunter sat back and seethed. “Well we don’t really seem to have a choice. Fine, I guess, if we can at least test him, that suspicious little prick.”  
“Well yeah, of course. He is pretty damn suspicious.”  
“Guys!” Dave called from where he crouched behind a bush. “Are you done yet? As much as I’m enjoying watching your little kiddie fight, I’ve really got to go find Karkles. I’d like to be able to go in with less risk of a heroic death, but if you don’t hurry up, I guess I’m just gonna have to rescue our furious little damsel in distress on my own.”  
Dean gave him an incredulous look. “Karkles? Does he actually let you call him that?”  
The kid smiled, for once. “Nope, he’d kill me instantly, or at least leave some nice bloody bitemarks on my shoulder. Fun times.”  
“Uh…” Dean was a little confused, he must admit. “I don’t think I’m gonna ask what that’s about.”  
“Anyway,” Sam interjected, “I guess you can come with us, since we can’t exactly stop you.”  
“Finally!”  
“But first you’ve got to let us test you.”  
Dave raised a single snowy eyebrow. “What, like math or something?”  
Dean sighed. “As in we make sure you’re not a demon, skinwalker, werewolf, or any number of other critters that want to, like Sam said, eat our faces. Just stay where you are.”  
Dave stood stoically under the handful of salt and the splash of water, up until the knives came out. His face froze, but otherwise the only visible sign of apprehension was the tensing of muscles, barely visible in the dim moonlight. When Dean took his arm and held it out, he tugged back.  
“What?  
The kid licked his lips. “What do you think you’re doing with that thing?”  
Sam was the one to answer. “Skinwalkers and the like can’t stand silver; fae, like ghosts, can’t take iron. Both can disguise themselves as humans. If we’re going to make sure you really are human, we need to cut you with each. Don’t worry, it’s just a little nick assuming you’re still human, and if you aren’t, you’ve got bigger problems.” Man, the kid was antsy, given that he had been ready to charge into battle just a few minutes ago.  
He took a breath. “Go ahead, I guess.” The same arm was tentatively proffered. Dean quickly ran a little line of red down the sickly pale skin, light glinting faintly on the silver blade. The only reaction was a slight shiver as the metal made contact, and even that was suppressed when the iron glided along a parallel arc.  
“All done.” Sam tossed his brother a roll of gauze, who wrapped up the cuts with brisk movements. “You ready for a fight with a furry freak?”  
Dave smirked. “At least this one’s neither omnipotent nor a friend. I’ll be fine.”  
“You have a friend who’s an omnipotent werewolf?” Dean raised his eyebrows. “And you want us to trust you?”  
“Nope. Jade’s not a werewolf, she’s just a furry.”  
“An all-powerful furry?”  
“Nope.” Dave shoved his glasses but on his nose. “Now come on, are we here to strife or to stand here second-guessing each other?  
“Strife?” Sam asked.  
“Fight. I said fight. Does this worl—bad question. Do you people not have strifes? Whatever. Let’s go get Mr. Shouty.”

 

        “Don’t be offended if we don’t hand you a gun, even if we did have another extra with us.” Dean cocked one eyebrow. “We still don’t exactly trust you.”  
Dave gave a nonchalant smile. “Likewise.” He cast a glance at the building. “Besides, from the looks of that thing, it’ll be mostly close quarters anyway. Don’t worry, I won’t get in the way of your guns, I’m plenty used to fighting with ranged folks.”  
There he went with another weird-ass comment. Vague, much? “Whatever. Let me be clear, kid,” Dean frowned. “You go right in front of us, and stay out of the way. Move off to the side whenever you can.”  
“Yeah, yeah. I get it. Let’s go.”

 

         The door slid open with a soft whooshing noise, completely failing to creak like such a dilapidated-looking door always seems like it should. An invisible observer might see a teenage boy dressed all in red enter with inaudible footsteps, emaciated frame muffled by his cloak, eyes covered by a pair of shades. The sword in his hands was strange and white, and though his body trembled, those hands held steady. Behind him, guns at the ready, came two men. They were not relaxed, these men, every muscle clenched in steel anticipation, pupils darting to every corner of the room like a pair of mice. Three sets of eyes scanned the scene.  
“Fuck.” Dave muttered. “If that’s Karkat’s, I will flip so fucking far off the handle. I will not pirouette, I will fucking dive and the Newtonian pair force will send the handle into orbit.”  
It seems our invisible observer forgot to mention the streaks of liquid scarlet puddled on the floor. Or the piece of conspicuously clean paper resting on the mantle, miraculously untouched by the surrounding carnage.  
“Looks like our werewolf buddy’s been busy lately.” Dean smirked.  
Upon examination, the house actually proved to be completely empty besides that slip of paper and the mostly dried blood haphazardly pooled across the three closest rooms to the door. Dave strode back into the living room, where the door was. “Nothing. And you guys are sure about this?”  
“Pretty damn sure, kid. Don’t tell me you could do better, cause you can’t.” Sam glared.  
“Nah, trouble’s pretty much always found me.”  
“I thought as much.”  
A ghostly-pale hand poked a brown and crinkled photo reclining on the brick mantle. “Do you know whose house this used to be?”  
“Don’t see why it matters,” Dean retorted, “if it’s a werewolf we’re dealing with. But nah, we didn’t know this cabin was here until we already found it, back where you jumped us.”  
Sam followed to peer over the teenager’s shoulder. “What’s that?”  
“What?”  
“This piece of paper—“  
Dave grabbed it, unfolding the note with trembling hands.  
“Fine. What’s in it?” Sam leaned toward him.  
“Shit.” He took a deep breath. “Karkat’s not here, and we’d better get going. No time to lose.”  
The invisible observer would need to perch on Dave’s shoulder to read the note, except that he already knows its contents.

"hey man,” it reads.  
"vantas’s fine for now, but you’d better hurry your ass up  
shit’s getting more complicated than we/i thought  
i’d tell you where to find him but i didn’t so i can’t  
sorry about that  
you know how it goes  
ask lalonde, but use pesterchum, not trollian  
trollian’s confusing as shit”   
“-you”

 Neither brother noticed the faint glow of Dave’s glasses as they left the house to regroup.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for all the comments! Comments make my heart go squee! (and totally make me want to write more) ;)

TG: so uh wtf is going on  
TG: do you even know  
TG: fuck  
TG: so karkats been kidnapped by a monster or something  
TG: just in case future me didnt give you a heads up or anything  
TG: so thats a thing  
TG: anyways  
TG: rose I need your help  
TG: I know youre online  
TG: rose  
TG: rose fuck come on

TT: Dave? Last I was informed, Karkat was doing excellently, permeated as he is by what ashes remain of your "sick fires".  
TT: Unless, of course, you are the original Dave, arrived at last in the new universe.  
TT: In the latter case, I have no idea where Karkat is.

TG: what  
TG: okay so he has to come out alright if hes here in the future  
TG: but  
TG: why the fuck are you in contact with a future me

TT: Shenanigans. 

TG: well obviously, what would we do without shenanigans  
TG: but no seriously  
TG: wheres karkat  
TG: i know you can help  
TG: i still have my powers so i know you still have yours  
TG: how do i find karkat

TT: I’m not entirely sure. We were plunged into this world quite a while back, from my perspective.  
TT: You were with those two hunters, if I recall correctly. Allow me some time to research.  
TT: In the meantime, I might recommend following your guides for the time being. 

TG: aight fine  
TG: just make it quick so I can meet up with you and you can tell me wtf is goin on  
TG: k bye

 

Dave rubbed an anxious wrist against the side of his head as the two hunters approached their car. It was a weird car, to Dave’s eyes, not that he’d ever really seen cars up close, but this one was long and black and it looked… old, he supposed. “So, uh, guys?” he asked. “Where exactly are we going now?”  
Sam gave a partial sigh. “There is no we, and I don’t know. Dean and I have a friend we figured we can call and who may be able to help, but that house didn’t actually give any leads on Karkat’s whereabouts. Unless, of course that note you won’t let us see had any more information than what you told us, but I don’t know because once again you won’t let me see it.”  
“Haha no,” Dave answered tensely. “It’s kinda personal.”  
“All the more reason we should take a look,” Dean insisted. “Sam and I aren’t going to be clouded by emotion from personal shit interfering, so we might notice something you don’t.”  
The teenager’s mostly impassive façade was marred by a faint frown. “Look. If either of you reads this stupid-ass note, you will have so many fucking questions about shit that is seriously none of your business, shit that is totally out of your league like a kid from the little league trying to hit a home goal with a bunch of professional football gods or something. You’ll be all ‘hopy shit what’s going on I have no idea who this epic manuscript is talking about’ and I’ll be all like ‘nah man, just wait and see, you haven’t seen any kind of epic manuscript yet, like did you even see that whole book miss Kanaya McFussyfangs wrote about how to breed the genesis frog to add to some stupid, lackluster walkthrough of SBURB she found? Now that’s an epic manuscript’”  
Sam tuned out the second half of the kid’s monologue. Why did he not just get to the point and then shut up, seriously?  
“You mean a home run, and baseball gods?” Dean commented. “Little league is for baseball,” he smirked. “And honestly that little rant of yours just made the note seem even more interesting—and besides, Sam’s right, we didn’t even want you to come along. How do we know you aren’t hiding anything with that note?”  
“Well, shit. Now that y’all are getting all suspicious on me, shit’s gonna get real, isn’t it?”  
“Uh…” Sam found himself confused, but Dean snorted and played along.  
“This shit is getting so real,” the hunter replied, “it’s time for a goddamn team pose or something, now give me the note.”  
 “Dude! How about no?”  
“How about yeah, or the next time we come up on a fight, I stay here and make sure your ass doesn’t twitch while Sammy goes and deals with it?”  
Damn. This conversation was getting… less than cordial, Dave thought. He seriously did need the help though, if this evil Jade clone could snatch Karkat off like the hunters had eventually described and he didn’t want to risk that heroic death. I mean he might be able to manage it, given that they were both alive later on, but that might just be because of Jane. He might in theory be able to fetch help, but nobody would be here in—Jade! Maybe Jade could help? Dave reopened pesterchum on his ishades—no, the name gardenGnostic was greyed out on his chumroll. Maybe she was on Trollian? Dave opened the other application, sending a few quick messages to the only version of Jade in the same time period.  
   
TG: jade

TG: hey 

TG: i need your help

TG: …

TG: you’re not online are you

TG: hello

TG: skaia to jade

TG: well shit

TG: message me if you can, i guess

TG: later

  
Well shit was right. Dave growled under his breath. He could message some other version of Jade, he figured, or he could leave it be and she would talk to him if she decided to. He had the nasty feeling, though, that a later version of himself had made sure Jade didn’t check her messages yet, that that was how the timeline was supposed to go—Dave is confused, the hunters read the note, everybody is suspicious. Or at least, those were the urgings of Dave's sense of timeline-related shenanigans and forebodings of doom.

Dean actually heard a faint, growled sigh from the kid before he finally answered.  
“Fine, I guess. Read the one-page tome of forbidden secrets, just don’t come crying to me when you don’t understand its doom-filled power.” Dave held out the note in his direction.  
The hunter snatched it, leaning against a tree to read. An eyebrow was raised almost immediately, probably due to the glaringly red ink.  
Sam leaned over his brother’s shoulder. “Oh my god, can whoever this is not write in red?”  
Bingo.  
“Wait, who’s even speaking here?”  
Dean’s other eyebrow went up. “Dave, who are Vantas and Lalonde? And what on this whole wide Earth is pesterchum? Or trollian?”  
Dave sighed. Unsurprising. “Didn’t Karkat give his last name, if he told you his first name? Karkat Vantas. And Rose Lalonde is a friend of mine.”  
“Karkat told us his last name was Vega,” Sam commented. “He also mentioned somebody named Rose at some point, claimed that she had… EZ? TZ? He said two letters, one of which was a z. Karkat claimed that a ‘Rose’ made ‘ZT’ or whatever their name was make you guys a bunch of necklaces.”  
Dave shrugged. “Yeah, they’re ugly as shit but they have… important stuff in them. And it’s TZ, her name is TZ.”  
“Why do you think Karkat lied about his name?” Dean prompted.  
The teenager rolled his eyes. “Why do you think? Probably just because he was all alone and injured in a strange place surrounded by a couple of unfamiliar humans and ‘Vantas’ is a really weird-ass name. Fuck if I know, we’re not actually a hive mind like those cyborgs from that tv show Jade likes so much, doctor what or something like that. She sent me the link to one of the episodes once. It was fun, but my bro wasn’t a huge fan. I didn’t love it either.” Crap, he hadn’t meant to mention Jade again. If they asked…  
Sam gave him an odd look. “On to the main question, I guess. Did you write this note to yourself? How?”  
Fuck. Dave hadn’t thought about that. Well, crap. How was he supposed to answer, like ‘yes I did I’m going to travel back in time later’? Like a couple of paranoid hunters with no game experience would believe him. “Uh… no?” he hazarded. “I was looking for Karkat, not abducting him”  
The brothers exchanged a glance. “You weren’t necessarily with us at the time, so we don’t actually know that.” Sam glared. “We don’t already have a sample of your handwriting, and if you try now that’ll be completely untrustworthy because if you are this guy, you know to change your handwriting up now.”  
Dean took over. “How the hell are we supposed to know you aren’t the one controlling the werewolf? You have not acted like the most trustworthy of people so far.”  
A ball of anxiety knotted itself in Dave’s small intestine. “I’m not… there’s someone controlling the werewolf?”  
“Given that it didn’t just try and eat your ‘friend’, yeah probably”  
“Look, guys, I’m not—“  
Sam leaned back against the car. “Yeah, but that’s exactly what you would say either way. We don’t know who you are, and you talk like this person, and you’re a fan of red like this person, and like with whoever wrote this note, we know next to nothing about you. I’m not saying you wrote this note, but you seem to be an excellent candidate. So if you want to earn our trust? Start. Talking.”  
Fuck. Dave internally facepalmed. Apparently this note of his was the monkey wrench thrown in the works. No! He couldn’t occasionally have something actually fucking go smoothly, because that would be too easy! Instead, the universe has to force him to do everything the hard way! God tier and deal with Jack before he kills everybody’s guardians and messes up the troll’s session? Nah. Be awake to defend yourself instead of letting your bro die protecting you like he always has and your alt-self that merged with a sprite get its wing chopped off? Too nice. Manage to fucking decapitate the Jack English and Cyberjack *before* that also requires decapitating Dirk, with all the complicated emotions involved? Nope! Instead we get to deal with the feeling fucking party of the year, just because the universe decided that nothing could ever go easily for the time player in an alpha timeline. Let the hunters of supernatural shit think you’re actually a normal human until you can rescue Karkat and get out of their hair? Apparently fucking not!  
“Uh, Dave?” Dean gave him a quizzical look.  
Did he say that out loud? Fuck. He thought he’d managed to keep the internal narrator inside, for once. Which was good. Because the fucking futility of his actions was like Godzilla right now, only the walls that kept his emotions off his face were Tokyo. He tried to brush off the hunter’s concern with a slight smile.  
“I’m fine. I’m, I’m fine.” Fail. Crap, he was way too out of practice.  
“You’re kinda hyperventilating there, Dave.”  
“Yeah, I know, just—“ He tried to soothe the eight-legged monstrosity of panic which the anxiety had turned in to at last, but it continued to clamber up his insides, slashing at his lungs on the way. “Fuck. I. I need,” Karkat, he needed Karkat, to use those razor claws of his, to shoosh-pap him, to purr him back into sanity. But of course, that was the problem he was trying to solve. Karkat was gone, and now these hunters who were searching for him thought he’d done it, and…  
“I wrote the note,” he choked out. “I wrote it, okay, or I will. It’s, I’m, argh! You won’t understand, you’ll just think I’m crazy!” Fuck. What was he doing? “I don’t know, I haven’t put it there yet, but that is probably from me! Future me! I can do some things, okay, some things that, that most people can’t.”  
“You can send pieces of paper back in time.” Dean’s expression was deadpan.  
Sure. Close enough. “Yes?” Dave quavered.  
“And you want us to believe this how?”  
Zap! went a crackle of crimson light on the roof of the car.  Propped behind the windshield atop the car sat a small piece of paper, shadowed writing scribbled on its face.

 

 

_  
“i want you to believe it because I can do this”_

  
Dean took the note, looking more than a bit unnerved. “That’s a… neat party trick.” A bolt of red flashed by his feet.

 

 

  
_“you seriously think that’s all there is to this shit?_  
_“a party trick?_  
_“you haven’t got a clue, youre like the us president when the alien invasion starts_  
_“all confused as fuck_  
_“whats even going on, why are they all grey_  
_“why do they have candy corn on their heads_  
_“what the fuck_  
_“until their queen goes and impales the dude_  
_“except in this case the aliens are friendly_  
_“the queen is dead_  
_“the aliens are refugees_  
_“the us turns them back at the border because theyre not white and they dont speak english”_

  
Dave peered around Dean's arm at the notes. Apparently he would eventually be able to send stuff besides himself through time? Either that or Jade would teleport them.  
“So, you sent that note—er, will send that note so to give your past self a hint of where to look?” Dean asked.  
“Probably. I don’t know, I haven’t done it yet.”  
“So do you think your friend Lalonde will be helpful?” he urged.  
“I mean probably,” Dave rolled his eyes. “I don’t actually know yet, because again, I haven’t gotten that far.”  
“Okay,” Sam let out a puff of breath. “So I guess we have to keep driving, then.” At Dave’s surprised glance, he explained. “We don’t have reception here. The nearest town is still a couple hours drive away, but it’ll have reception so that we can contact Bobby and you can talk to your friend.”  
Oh, right. Normal people had to depend on reception. “Right. Yeah. Fine. And then we follow their advice to go get Karkat?”  
“And then we can go get Karkat.” Dean nodded. 

        Sam growled to himself. They had only been on the road an hour, but already that kid was insufferable! He just kept drawling on and on with that faint Southern accent, projecting tense discomfort in a 3-foot cloud around his suspiciously relaxed sprawl. But of course, none of this useless babble was on topic, none of it seemed to matter to anything, much less whatever Dave said a few seconds before. When Sam prodded, he wouldn't even admit to being nervous, as was totally evident to anyone in his proximity. How the kid could think that was surreptitious, he had no idea. Sure, his posture and such was perfectly loose and such, but there was something about his mannerisms that just _itched_. Maybe it would work over text or voice chat, where whoever the kid was talking to wasn't in his physical presence, but he would have interacted with people in person before now! He--  
Sam's irritable internal monologue was interrupted by the sudden appearance of an angel in the back seat.  
"A little warning, next time, Cas!" Dean exclaimed. "You practically made me swerve off the road!"  
"You must be worried about something, if my appearance now startles you so." He turned to stare at the other car seat, where Dave had very decidedly not jumped, though he did seem to flinch at the angel's diamond-blue gaze. "You may be a Knight, but you are not the one which spoke to me earlier in his fear."  
Dave smirked anxiously, making a conscious effort to soothe his muscles back into relaxation before speaking. "What'd you say to the other guy, that you're the almighty smiter of shitty-ass romcoms?"  
Castiel furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. "I'm sorry, I do not understand your choice of words. As it happens, I told your compatriot very little, save by expressing my confusion at his visual abilities. Do you not have any questions about my flight?"  
"Only how you got inside this moving car in the first place but hey, maybe you teleport." the teenager shrugged. "It isn't that important."  
"So you cannot see my wings?"  
Dave blinked behind his shades. "No?"  
It was Sam's turn to interrupt, peering around the back of his seat. "Cas, what did you say about them being knights?"  
That earnest blue gaze finally left Dave to stare at the hunter. "According to some very ancient artifacts, this appears to be the Knight of Time." his voice was soft as the wind in the trees. "The boy who fled the car when I appeared was Karkat Vantas, the Knight of Blood. Patron of my kind and one other." Castiel's voice ended on a puzzled note. "I do not know why I have not heard of him before, or why the angels do not recognize him. I also do not understand how the artifact which I consulted could exist, for it is older than the world in which it dwells. Equally puzzling is the fact that each statue was marked with a frog, even though frogs too were created after the beginning of all."  
Snorted laughter spilled abruptly from Dave's throat. "A frog," he chuckled. "Of all the game artifacts to survive, it was the frogs, of course! I mean come on, there were so many of them!" he grinned, one of the first truly sincere expressions of joy the hunters had seen on his face the entire time. "Lemme guess, it was with crappy JPEG versions of the statues of the trolls on Derse and Prospit, because they're totally fucking indestructible due to their eternal shittiness. And you don't seem as sure about me, so I guess our statues didn't do that well when whatever it was happened, given that they're actual fucking statues."  
Everybody stared.  
"I have got to tell Karkles about this when we find him, he'll be so annoyed, it'll be hilarious!" Dave sobered. "Why'd he flip the fuck out, though? I don't see anything weird about-- wait. Flight? You mentioned flight, and wings, and you think you know what was created when, which implies you were there or know someone who was. What the hell are you?"  
Castiel cocked his head, and uttered the most predictable sentence in this story's history. "I am an angel of the Lord."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I added a couple of vocabulary notes to this one (at the bottom), since this was one occasion where I accidentally sounded like I was vomiting a dictionary at certain points. Also, there's one section toward the beginning with mentions of self-harm, child abuse, and seriously homophobic and transphobic bible protestors-- if you want to skip it, you should be fine (and still get the point) if you stop reading after "concerned basso rumble" until the end of the paragraph. ^_^ If you really want to skip anything even hinting at any of those topics, skip from the sentence with "Rose is as lesbian a lesbi--fuck I shouldn't have said that" to the end of the paragraph instead, though that does miss some more important bits.  
> Final note: Frick Rose kind of stole the plot I had planned previously. Sorry. 
> 
> Also: *to a jaunty tune* I am aro, super duper aro, I can't write flirting so I didn't even try!

 

 

 

 

Castiel cocked his head, and uttered the single most predictable sentence in this story’s history. “I am an angel of the Lord.”  
Dave’s reaction, much to Sam’s perverse disappointment and overt relief, was much more subdued than Karkat’s had been. The teenager stayed in his seat, his aura of anxiety increasing only a little. After an uncomfortably long pause, he answered. “I thought you fuckers all died when Jack tore your land to neon shreds.”

This was not the answer Castiel had been expecting. “I… understand your words, but not the concept you seem intent on communicating.”  
Dave’s shoulders were so rigid it looked like someone strapped a coat hanger to his back as his amateur poker face gave way to a faint frown. For a long moment, Castiel felt an unfamiliar stirring of discomfort in his gut, confronted with the black, chitinous* mirrors which marked the teenager’s stare. At last, Dave relinquished him. “Just—“ the teenager muttered, eyes flicking away with a slight shift of his head. “Just don’t touch me.”  
Sam and Dean exchanged a glance across the steering wheel. Ominous silence aside, what the shit had Dave meant by that first remark? Dean opened his mouth to ask, but Sam interrupted. “We should be hitting reception any time now, Dave. If you can get help from that friend of yours…”  
The kid gave a barely perceptible twitch as he ripped his gaze from the darkened countryside and empty freeway outside the window. “Yeah,” he said softly, with a glance at the angel who sat still and silent in the other seat. “I don’t know. Rose might be able to help.”  
“How? She wasn’t here,” Dean challenged. “How can this girlfriend of yours help us find Karkat anyway?”  
Dave gave a small choking sound. “Girlfriend? Not that we never gave it a shot before somebody translated John’s confused ecto-babble into actual sentences, but a) we’re siblings and b) Rose is as lesbian a lesbi—fuck I shouldn’t have said that.” He rubbed one hand over his temple with the same intensity as another might use to bury their head in their hands. Dave’s breath sped up as he pulled his legs from their too-relaxed sprawl into the circle of his red-cloaked arms, eyes locked on his feet. “Are you bible-thumpers gonna evict me yet?" he prodded bitterly, voice tight. "Or do you really find it so damned unsettling that my sister is more lesbian than fucking Sappho that you can’t even address me like a human being?”  
Castiel’s brow, once again, was furrowed. “Why would having a tendency to use the Holy Book as a percussion instrument increase one’s willingness to evict a teenager onto the side of the road? More to the point, why would your or your sibling’s sexuality cause honest men to feel uncomfortable in your presence?”  
Dave stared, this time not the gorgonian stare** which held Castiel captive for so long in its blank smoothness, but rather a stare of incredulous surprise. “Fuck if I know. You said you were an angel, you tell me. You're the one those assholes were supposedly quoting, aren't you?”  
Dean interrupted. “Where are you from?“  
“Texas.”  
Dean sighed. “Yeah, I thought as much. Cas, I think Dave’s referring to the shitloads of people who are very, very Christian and use that fact to justify crap like refusing to serve gay people or, in fact, kicking them out of hotels and restaurants, ditching them on the side of the road, and such. I must admit, I used to think like that myself, but, well… Sammie opened my mind a bit. He went to Stanford for a bit, you know. Ended up spending a good deal of time in San Francisco, including poking around the Castro area. You and your secret are safe with us, kid. Uh, Dave.” His eyes were locked on the road. “Don’t worry about it.”  
Dave turned back to face the angel. “You don’t—You—What the fuck?” Despite or perhaps because of his confusion, a blank mask began to swallow Dave's face into its depths. “So what you’re sayin’ is not only were those people assholes, they…” He trailed off. “They were wrong?” I didn’t deserve it after all, Dave thought in the privacy of his head, and the thought set a sickening warmth in his heart. “I… You’re seriously an angel? You’re not, just, fuckin' with me?”  
“I am not,” came the concerned basso rumble.  
Dave gnawed at his lip, finally releasing a short puff of breath as he turned back to the window, eyes prickling. Maybe, whispered a nervous thought, maybe these hunters aren’t as bad as I thought they were. An image came to mind like a tide of bile, a group of protestors in front of the cheap-ass diner where he bought ribs sometimes when bro was out of the house. Their signs were like that of religious freedom protestors across America: Tall, black, and crowded with white and red writing condemning, well. Him, really, among other people. A girl is a girl. A boy is a boy. A gay is the devil, bi people don't exist, and trans people are evil or just plain wrong. Dave had internalized that message a long time ago, and shrugged it off like he shrugged off the videos in his apartment, the cameras which tracked him, the occasional stalker that took a fancy to _him_ and not just Bro’s porn. It certainly didn’t have anything to do with the nauseating satisfaction which used to twist his insides in a knot from time to time as he took a particularly hard hit in a strife with Bro, or filled his belly with tepid water from the sink before another starving night.  
“Good.”

It was only another hour or so of driving before they pulled up at a diner, arrayed in the classic red and white checkerboard pattern. Castiel had disappeared as silently as he showed up after about a half hour, after a terse conversation with the brothers about a rash of what they determined to be ghost attacks all the way in New Jersey. On the whole, the group had miraculously managed to avoid further awkwardness- or panic-inducing conversational topics on the way! Somehow.  
It was weird, walking into the diner with an adult on either side of you, neither one looming over your own lanky build. It was weird, that they immediately offered to foot the bill, which was just as well since you weren't even sure the couple bucks stashed in your sylladex were valid currency here. It was also weird, if expected, the number of stares you attracted in your bright red pajamas-- you didn't want to change out of them, not only because they'd cleaned themselves as usual while you spaced out in the car, but also because you didn't want to remind the hunters about your sylladex. That was one thing you'd noticed, whenever you snuck out of the apartment, was that nobody else seemed to have a sylladex besides yourself and Bro, and your friends. Apparently, that was true here, too. You sat on the opposite side of the booth from the two brothers, and ordered the biggest meal you thought you could stuff down your throat/surreptitiously pocket, out of slowly-returning habit. Who knows, you might get stranded away from them, or they might stop paying for your food-- anyway. The hunters ordered plenty of food, too, so at least that didn't seem very weird, even if they gave you odd looks when you asked for apple juice. You all ate quickly. Before being given the check, however, Dean ordered something else in hushed tones, to go. When it was delivered--  
"Hello, baby!" Dean looked about as smug as a metaphorical cat who stood not only in front of a dish of cream, but where a fish had just plopped out of the water to drown in the air beside it. Dave could practically watch him lick his lips in anticipation like some cartoon character. The subject of Dean's attention was a pastry concoction which Dave identified as a pie of some kind. It steamed in a couple of spots, but was cold or lukewarm in others, probably the result of the sporadic work of a microwave. Ah, the joys of diners at dawn!  
"You wanted to know how Rose might be able to help, right?" Dave had pestered her again on the way to the diner, and while Rose didn't yet have any answers on Karkat, she had been able to tell him that seers were a thing in this world, and not one particularly mistrusted by the hunting community.  
Dean made no move, but Sam looked over at him. "Yeah. How?"  
Dave suppressed the urge to tap his foot nervously. "She's a seer, I guess. Has visions from time to time. That's how I first found out about all this shit, was her." He smiled slightly. "Rose can't really control her Sight all that well, but I let her know what was going on. If she gets her hands on something of Karkles', she might be able to induce a Seer fugue sorta thing, so I directed her to one of his old sweaters." Lies. Actually, though, if Rose can induce visions, that might be a good idea.  
Dean had already devoured his precious slice of pie and was wiping off his face with a paper napkin. "Damn that was good pie. What, did you text her or something?"  
"... yes?"  
"Cool." The hunter tossed a few extra dollars onto the tray when the waitress handed him back the card. "Later, beautiful." He stood up. "Ready to call Bobby and fetch our irate... what was it you called him? Our furious damsel in distress?"  
Dave stood, stretching his legs in a slow, gentle movement. "Sure. Sam?"  
The younger brother smiled. "Alright then."

 

Bobby looked up from his book at the ring of a phone. Which one would it be today? He paced to the line of phones arranged on the wall, each labelled with a scrawl on a faded sticky note-- CDC, Park Service, Feds, whatever alibi might be needed. None of these were ringing, for once. Did somebody actually want to talk to _him_? Gosh fucking golly gee, he thought, there’s a rarity. Bobby smiled grimly to himself before answering.  
“Whaddaya want?”  
It was Sam’s voice on the other end, somewhat more hesitant than usual. Maybe that was just the phone?  
“Hey Bobby, it’s Sam. Got a question for you.”  
“Shoot.”  
“Do you know why somebody might be controlling a pack of werewolves?”  
Bobby blinked. “As far as I know, werewolves don’t work in groups. I take it there’s some reason you’re asking?”  
“Um, yeah,” Sam muttered something to somebody else as Bobby curbed his impatience. “We found this kid on the side of the road running from them. Well, walking, given he had a big hole in his gut, but you get the idea. We went back with this kid to try and get the bugger, but before we found them, they found him. Something grabbed him, I mean we assumed it was the werewolf, right, since the kid had already fought one an hour or two before we found him, but damn that thing was fast. And then we found the house nearby where we think the werewolf hid out, and it was covered with blood but the kid wasn’t there. Neither was his corpse, there were no bones, nothing that indicates he might have died except the shit ton of blood.”  
“Yeah no werewolf will have eaten the bones, too. Did you search the surrounding area?”  
“No dice,” Sam sighed.  
“Fuck. I’ve never known anything like that to happen, but I’ll give it a shot, alright?”  
“Thanks man”  
Bobby hung up, turning his eyes to the young woman in the black and purple dress who lingered in the kitchen. She upturned one snowy eyebrow, glancing at the phone with her shockingly violet eyes. “No mention of your friend, Lalonde, sorry. You sure they’re the hunters he said?”  
“Absolutely.”  
Bobby shook his head, letting a breath stream from his mouth. “Sorry lady. I don’t know who you heard this from, but my boys didn’t pick up any other strays.”  
The stranger gave a small smile, offering him a strangely pitying glance. “You did your best. Thank you.” She turned to go, sending the shadows shifting in an eldritch tango in the folds of her skirt, but paused in the doorway. “Actually,” her voice was animated, “I’ve heard you do this thing involving pendulums and maps which could be used to locate individuals. Might I prevail on you to teach me?”  
“You’re not gonna be good enough in time to locate your friend, Lalonde. Better that you just go, no need to get any more involved in this shit.”  
A freezing cackle split the air as the lady laughed, turning to face the hunter, hair seeming to glow with the sun in the center of her dress and casting a faint purple light on her brown skin. Bobby raised his chin stubbornly, a pit of cold opening up in his stomach. Damn this woman was creepy. “But come on in,” he continued, swallowing the nervousness which crept up his throat, “have a drink, and I’ll see if I can find him for you. Sound good?” The glow was just an optical illusion, Bobby reminded himself, and the carnivorous glint of her teeth, and absolutely the way the shadows seemed to shrink away from here presence only to be tangled in her skirt. He’d given her holy water in her coke (Ms. Lalonde didn’t drink) but she seemed unaffected, and she’d walked right out from under the demon trap on the ceiling with only a faint shiver and darkening of the room that was probably just a cloud passing in front of the sun. Bobby shot a quick look at her as she sidled back into the room, closing the door softly behind her, but the woman still seemed creepy as all hell. When he sat himself down by the living room table, sodas in hand, she was already studying a page of incomprehensible scribbles with every sign of enjoyment.  
Bobby cleared his throat, handing one cold mug of soda to the stranger. “What’s this kid’s name again?”  
“Karkat. Karkat Vantas.”

 

Fuck this.  
Fuck this grubfucking situation with the sharp end of the mother grub’s waste chute until it crumbled under the sheer weight of its own utter idiocy, sending wrigglers everywhere crying for their lusii. Fuck the entire concept of blindfolds, and guards, and locks. If only that fucking guard would go to sleep or some other equally clichéd signal of incompetence, if only he actually had some way to get past the inevitability of a locked gogdamned door, he might actually have a chance of escape. It’s not like getting out of his binds would be difficult, after all, it was just a bit of rope and a scrap of stinky-ass cloth that he could captchalogue easy as breathing and nobody would be able to access it ever again due to his piece of shit sylladex. But no! No. This had to be hard. He had to be here, alone in this dank hivestem somewhere in the middle of nowhere waiting for whatever confused imitation of grimbark Jade attempted to murder him next, like they did in that last house. The only thing they’d succeeded in doing, so far as Karkat could tell, was getting their own blood all over the place. Mostly theirs, anyway. That was one thing that hadn’t totally sucked. Maybe Knight of Blood wasn’t totally the most fuck-useless classpect inexistence, given how he’d fared just a minute ago. When he’d woken up in that room again, Karkat had just a second of clarity as he listened to the werewolves snap at each other. He’d said a few words, head full of a familiar crackling like it had been when he finally managed to shooshpap Gamzee out of murder mode, and those two that had been eyeing each other with the pitchest of hate finally just went for each other. Maybe they’d all been having trouble piercing his skin before, but apparently the fuckers had no problem slicing each other open all over the place. This one other humanoid lump of grubloaf came in and auspiticized between the two eventually, but they’d already been put far enough out of commission for their fight that Karkat had apparently managed to be left alone until the auspisticizing asshole got back to move them all to someplace else. Unfortunately, that somewhere else happened to be a dark basement in the middle of nowhere, where they actually kept a guard on him. And now, thanks to his own lack of further clarity and overall immobility, not only did they take TZ’s disguise necklace off of him, it seemed his kidnappers had much more familiarly lethal plans in mind.  
Karkat looked up as the door slammed open to reveal the man he recognized as that auspisticizing asshole.  
The human smiled.  
“Showtime.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *chitinous means “like chitin”, the shiny stuff on the outside of beetle wings (since my beta reader didn’t know what it meant)  
> **gorgonian means “like that of a gorgon”, or “like that of medusa”—in this context, basically a gaze that turns the looked-at to stone, figuratively speaking.


	5. Chapter 5

A trickle of sweat ran down Bobby’s neck, pendulum hand trembling over the map laid out in front of him. It wasn’t like his scrying attempts were failing, really. He just—somebody was obscuring this Karkat’s location. Every method he’d tried so far, everything he’d attempted had just resulted in a fuzzy blur or otherwise inconclusive results, but Ms. Lalonde was still there, demurely perched in a chilly corner of the room, sipping her soda and sending nonexistent tendrils of darkness to grope the air around her. Finally Bobby leaned back. “I’m sorry lady,” he set the pendulum down with a thud. “Are you sure you’ve got the right name? Karkat Vantas? Because he is just not showing up.”  
The woman’s head fell to one side. “I have the right name, I know.” One hand drummed on the side of her chair. “Just give it one more try, and allow me to assist you in this last attempt.”  
Bobby suppressed a shiver. “Knock yourself out, lady. If you can find him—“ A freezing pair of fingertips touched the back of his wrist with deliberate firmness as he retrieved his pendulum. Ms. Lalonde pressed against his back, having passed before he blinked between the goodly room which had separated them, looming despite her short stature and heavy build with unnerving lightness. “No,” she breathed, shadows shifting with her words, “you are the one who will find him. All I will do is keep that which obscures your search at bay.”  
Bobby let out a breath. He lifted the pendulum, dangling it loosely above the northwest corner of the world map before him. He focused his thoughts on the name—and the weight behind him stiffened as the room seemed to darken. Ms. Lalonde’s fingers were steady, but a lance of what felt almost like electricity prickled down them as her skin seemed to lose its color, humming along the hunter’s hand. “Miss—“ Bobby licked his lips, tearing his eyes away from the map. It couldn’t be an optical illusion, not this time.  
The woman’s skin was laced with dark grey dappled across her flesh from head to toe. The symbol on her black and purple dress blazed beneath her luminescent eyes and blindingly white hair, curling in short ribbons about her head in blatant defiance of gravity. A background roar of static surrounded her, coating the room in buzzing energy. When her eyes finally returned to meet Bobby’s, it was as if some great alien had bent to view the ants of earth. How could any human subsist in the enormity of that continuous explosion? He was, this was, it was like touching a… star…  
The world returned to sanity with a jolt. Bobby lurched backward, grabbing a rifle from the countertop. Ms. Lalonde stood smirking by the map table, a human sun tapping her foot in the hunter’s living room. “Really, Mr. Singer.” With a few brisk strides, her hand fell over the barrel of the gun in a manner that was entirely unsafe, drawing both weapon and the hunter who brandished it toward her in a quick jerk. “I already told you," Ms. Lalonde's whisper admonished. "I need your help.”

 

The older Dave leaned back in his chair, hand lightly smeared by his signature red ink. He massaged his hand for a moment, glancing down at the four pieces of paper which covered his desk, coated as they were in a lazy crimson scrawl. The air before his fingers flickered for a few . matte. It had been quite a while since the game, from his perspective, and there had been all sorts of things to try alchemizing his turntables with. One of them, Dave had discovered, allowed him to do—this. With a burst of concentration and rapid flick of a disk, the first note disappeared to the house where Karkat was originally kept. If he had been there, Dave had eventually figured out, he could teleport small objects there with these turntables. Like these notes! He didn’t remember exactly what they were supposed to say, but then again, it didn’t really matter. As long as he went with his gut, everything would turn out alright. Dave snickered to himself as he reread the next pair of notes. “Believe me because I can do this”? Seriously, if it weren’t for the fact that he would be seen, he totally would have delivered these things by hand, just to see his own reaction. There were still another three years, four months, eleven days and 20 minutes to go before the younger him figured out how to do this, so the look on his face? Priceless. Dave sent the pair of notes off with a quick thought. The final sheet of paper left on his desk was bare, but for a set of red-lettered numbers. Coordinates, actually, but he couldn’t put them in place just yet. Rose had to tell him what they were over the phone, then he supposedly wrote them down and handed them to Jade for transport. Jade would bring the note to just-out-of-the-game Dave, the timelines would be sorted out, and Rose would finally stop trying to learn what happened from him, having experienced her end of it herself. Good thing she already got back on decent terms with the horrorterrors, he thought with an internal eye roll. Fuckin’ creeps. Rose never could stay away for long.  
_‘Cause this is THRILLER! Thriller night! And no-one’s gonna save you from the beast about to strike!_  
Dave grinned into the blare of music emanating from the pale glow of his phone. “Hey sis.”  
“Brother mine!” Even her voice was wreathed in the subtle smirk of mystery. “I have located past Karkat. That hunter proved surprisingly useful, and has agreed to teach me his methods of divination on the condition that I never visit him again. Were you aware—“  
“Yeah, yeah, that’s great Rose.” Dave interrupted. “Coordinates first, small talk later. Like way later, this is mouse-sized talk, cockroach-sized talk compared to—wait shit, no, give me the coordinates first, then I can drone on with endless useless metaphors but I _think_ you should maybe give them to me _right now_ before anything happens.”  
“Dave—“ he could hear the sigh from his phone. “Fine," Rose huffed. "46.5147 and -120.36. Now can I regale you with the details of my newfound education? Good. So this poor hunter— the fuck—“  
There was a short clatter on the other end.  
"Heh," Dave smirked uneasily. "Called it."

 

The hardwood floor was traced with unfamiliar runes in a foreboding black script which seemed to crawl beneath Karkat’s gaze, creeping up the walls of his vision with the insubstantial mutterings of cockroaches. Not that he was particularly scared, of course. The very idea made him laugh (and turned his stomach to a churning mobius strip of anxiety). At least, he wasn't particularly scared of the human, she wasn’t terribly imposing, despite seeming to be immune to the troll's blood/relationship powers in her clearheaded state. The part that Karkat found utterly terrifying was the sounds clawing their way up the human’s esophagus, made visible as clouds of smoke and living insects, twisting a thorny dance along the diagram coating the room. This idiotic, vomit-inducing kringlefuck of a human being seemed to have decided to summon eldritch beings from beyond the furthest planes of existence, and actually had the means to do it. Somehow. And for some reason she required Karkat to accomplish whatever her task was?  
After another moment, the chanting stopped, though the rustling murmur of magic continued to fill the room. Footsteps tapping lightly between lines of ink, the human made her way to where the troll sat bound to a chair, eyes narrowed.  
“For the Inner Circle,” she said evenly, “I require the blood of a stranger.” Brown hair whispered in its passage from her cheek to one green-clad shoulder. “The book was quite explicit in that. From what I could tell, however, it didn’t just want any stranger. The average person you’ve never met, you see,” she continued casually, slipping a knife into her hand, “isn’t exactly strange. I know their motivations, in the grand scheme of things, what makes them tick. You,” her other hand weighed the turquoise disguise amulet from its fingertips, “are not so similar to them. You,” she smiled, “are… strange.”  
“What the fuck do you want from me, you pretentious douche?” Karkat growled like the rattle of cicadas, deep in his throat now that his voice was no longer distorted.  
“Nothing so different from anyone else.”  
Karkat felt a faint tug in his bloodpusher. “You want something, what is it, I can get it to you—“  
“Hah!” a bitter laugh curled in the woman’s throat. “No.”  
“You said it yourself, I’m a stranger, maybe I can get it for you, even if a human couldn’t—”  
“Only a god could manage it,” came the casual answer, ignoring Karkat’s screech of frustration. The human pressed the knife into his shoulder until with an almost audible pop it pierced his hide, slipping a small black bowl beneath the trickle of blood which resulted. “And to get that—I need the ink with which to summon an ancient god, who will either kill me, or—not. The blood,” she drew the bowl away with an obscenely pale pap of Karkat’s cheek, “of a stranger.”

 

“Ah… excuse me!”  
Dean turned around with a cocky smile, halfway to the Impala.  
“Hey sweetheart,” his gaze met the woman’s astonishingly green eyes as Sam came to a leisurely stop behind him. Dave hesitated, but continued on to the car after a moment’s consideration. The woman was tall and inordinately muscular, hair falling in scraggly black waterfalls over her square shoulders to frame the round green glasses perched on her nose. Around her neck, he noticed almost immediately, and hanging from a set of dog tags, was a turquoise triskelion symbol. Hadn’t Karkat… yeah. He said they contained contact information for him and his friends? But Dave didn’t seem to have one.  
“You’re Sam and Dean Winchester, right?”  
Dean was jerked from his thoughts. “Depends who’s asking,” he shifted forward, weight on the balls of his feet. How the hell did this woman know his name?  
She sighed, hair shifting as if something on the top of her head had disturbed it, and dug a piece of paper out of the dark grey laptop case perched on her shoulder. “My friend Dave Strider is with you.” The laptop case slid to the ground. “He’ll need this, and then I need to get to class.”  
Dean took the paper with cautious hands. “And you know him… how?”  
“Old friends.” There was a flash of canines. “Very old friends.”  
“And Karkat?” he eyed the stranger suspiciously.  
“He’s an utter ass sometimes, but I do love him, the obstinate fuck,” she rolled her eyes. “Good luck with your hunting, and sorry about those sub-par grimbark things. They didn’t exactly turn out as intended.” The woman slipped her case back over one shoulder, padding softly in the other direction with a smile. Dean unfolded the note with brisk hands, eyeing the stranger as she left.

_46.5147, -120.36_

Sam stared over his shoulder. “The hell?”  
The digits were inscribed in the same crimson pen as before, lonely in the center of the page. “Coordinates.” Dean licked his lips. “This must be where we’re going.”  
“And we can trust them… why?”  
Dave cleared his throat from where he leaned against the Impala. “You folks might be interested to learn, I know that lady. And Jegus she’s old now, holy fuck!”  
The brothers gave him an odd glance. “She was like, twenty-five.”  
“ _Looks_ twenty-five,” Dave snorted. “Thirty years, four months, twenty-eight days and eighty-nine minutes if she’s a day.”  
“How do you know her, anyway?” Sam queried.  
“Old friend.” At the glare that resulted, Dave tossed his head and continued, light glinting off his shades. “Her name’s Jade, I knew her when she was a kid.” Technically not a lie. “And if she gave you that paper, it’s probably not wrong.”  
“They’re coordinates,” Dean said, picking his way back to the car. “Why the hell would she be able to just randomly hand us coordinates which match where we’re going? That’s absurd.”  
A faint smile marked the teenager’s face. “Jade is really fucking good at spatial relations.”  
“That doesn’t explain how she knows what we’re looking for,” Dean replied sharply. “Out of all possible worlds, why would this random chick you know mysteriously from before you were born have figured this out? Did you—“ Something clicked. “This is connected to your Seer sister, isn’t it? She sent Jade, who happened to be in the area for no apparent reason, but neglected to text you?”  
Dave inclined his head slightly. “They are probably from Rose, yeah.” She could have texted, he realized. Well, messaged him on Trollian, or even Pesterchum, since she was in the same point on the overarching timeline. He gave an internal sigh. Whatever happened, Dave resolved, would happen, and some version of him would have to succeed given that the alpha Dave was still around with a Karkat in his personal future. Time shenanigans or not, this must be the thing that was meant to happen—or, of course, something was horribly wrong and he might have to interfere but would definitely die a terribly painful death and everything was about to dissolve—Dave tore himself from that train of thought with a wince. “Where do… where do these coordinates point?”  
“Not too far,” Sam admitted. “We have to head back toward where we picked you up, closer to the Cascades. Mountain range,” he added at the teenager’s blank stare. “The big north-south one along the west coast of the country.”  
“So even if we don’t actually know these are from Rose, or that Rose is pointing us to the right place, it’s worth a shot.”  
Dean shrugged. “I suppose it is.” Only a lonely waitress saw the young woman with the black hair disappear in a flash of emerald lightning as the boys drove away.

Had somebody been pounding hive construction chisels into his skull? Karkat groaned, hauling his head upright from where it rested on his chest, blinking to clear the spots from his vision. He grimaced at the dull roar of pain resting at the top of his spine. Had he…  
“Rise and shine!”  The human sat up from where she rested on the floor between lines of sanguine diagrams, hands trembling in the air. After a moment, her face changed from the unfamiliar cheer to the very picture of earnest concern. “You blacked out there, for a bit, beloved stranger.”  
Karkat squinted. He hadn’t seen her there, just a second ago, had he? He shook his head briefly, trying to figure out why he couldn’t feel his toes. His arms, of course, had mostly lost feeling several hours ago beyond a constant ache in his shoulders—maybe the ropes were cutting off his circulation? Not that that explained the numbness in his feet, the only bonds along his legs were those loosely lashing his ankles to the chair, and they had a good half-inch or so of give. Was the ritual… done?  
The human’s hair whispered as it poured down her shoulder at the tilt of her head. “I was worried for minute there.” A faint smile pricked her lips. “I thought I might have to find another of you strangers to do this whole rigmarole over again, all because I drained you a little too dry. Fortunately for both of us, it looks like you’ll be fine. I thought about giving you some orange juice, but we’re pretty far from the nearest grocery store!” She chuckled.  
“What…” Karkat rasped. “What the potato-fucking nookstench is a grocery store?” Blood loss, he growled to himself. Of course. Also, what the fuck did this human seem to think was actually funny about the whole situation, being out in the middle of butt-fucking-nowhere?  
“Never you mind!” One trembling, rust-stained hand ran through the human’s tangled hair. “You won’t see any, because now that you’re awake, I can finally start!”  
He blinked. “If you hadn’t started,” came the shout, “than WHY would a DISDAINFUL, SHAMESHITTING ASSLORD like yourself have started to fucking DRAIN MY BLOOD like an particularly experimental loser of a rainbow drinker? You SERIOUSLY need to get your priorities straight, if collecting some mutant alien blood is more important to you than this ritual you so dearly want!” Oops. Maybe, he reflected in hindsight, that wasn’t the best thing to remind his captor of.  
“It’s okay,” she answered, a hollow edge of defensiveness ridging the calm which pervaded her voice. “It’s for the ritual.” The human stood up, seeming to totally ignore the way the symbols traced along every surface of the little square room writhed at her movement. She dropped the cheerful face as she locked the single door to the area. “And when I’m done, either I will join Bianca, wherever she may be, or her murderers will.” Within a few strides, the human had returned to the very center, grasping the knife and partly-emptied bowl of blood from the floor. She tucked the knife into her belt, turning to raise the bowl into the air on the side furthest from Karkat. Weight swaying from foot to foot, words—Karkat was pretty sure words were involved somewhere, at least—began to buzz from her throat.  
“ ** _Jalu throl lub ph'bl t't wuld, futtween t't wulden, ishner t't wuld_**.”  
The broodfester tongues—  
“ ** _Avatara yi wirg nge n’ghft, mushk nge sterhk_** ,”  
A faint trickle of boiling liquid dripped down the side of Karkat’s neck.  
“ ** _Futarer yi t't ‘fhalma yi ash_** ” –a pant escaped his lips—“ ** _throl dwell't ph'bl t't estghehal,_** ” it seared the conscious thought from Karkat’s brain with words that burned to hear and fought to be spoken in the jellied fear of his remaining mind—  
**_t't blud yi gi strekshet ya offjer jalu, tis fjeltch jalu jho on’sr rohsst yi rakh,_** he couldn’t, **_ah gis ya stell'bsna,_** couldn’t think, could only, **_thr’ll ley yj n’gha fut llll on’sr reck,_** hear the words, or see them – ** _da jalu gohluyng_** —countless living words that filled the room as crawling horrors, **_h’t on’sr nge gu’ilg gohluyng, t’t reskat,_** could barely breath, it sucked the— ** _hoth agl joit jalu mirschk capft_** —air from his lungs— ** _hoth capon sneck on’sr glukyjho, seet sas’h needed tis mul taksher g’lbolyr rochl’lg dless beltorgon sneere_** —the circles twitched in eerie dances glowing red, **_strekshet ya offjer jalu,_** and Karkat— **_tis fjeltch ph’bl t’t estghehal, jalu llll t’t_** —Karkat—  
**_Begh driet m’lgolyb chask, bre melmonyb fjelt jalu jho, sst kallyg mr thr’ll ley je fut. Mirra, mirra, blol t’t wuld, fistk mek throl, llll stell’bsna ph’bl dwll’t. Jennsklg bner, kwd’fg mer, driet chaks’s ph’bl yi metsas, sst mirschk sst mirschk metvet capft, capon ph'bl ohmet rall. Joit mischk llll t'tgul mal, dless bletorgon sneerg'l n'ghft. Avatara yi wirg, mushk nge sterhk, jalu jho throl ph'bl t't. Rochl'lg dless g'gbolge reskat, mirra blol t't wuld! Mirra blol! Fitsk mek throl llll stell'bsna ph'bl dwllt blglata--  
_**

And  
There  
Was  
  
L  
I  
G  
H  
T

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops, there'll be one more chapter than I anticipated. Oh, well. I'm almost done! *enthusiasm*


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hurray it's finally done! This chapter took way longer to write than I thought it would. Sorry about that.  
> In any case, I will eventually be replacing this with a more edited version, but I just really wanted to post this and be done with it. Happy reading! ^_^

It wasn’t hard to find their destination.   
Sure, all phones but Dave’s lost reception an hour or so into the woods, but the general coordinates on the paper map were enough to end up in vaguely the right place. Once they were close, well—it was pretty obvious where they were going, because Dean could hear the screams which echoed from what looked like the silhouette of a ranger’s cabin from here. Also an entire section of the forest was lit with blinding black light, rushing in a torrent all the way to the road as they passed and pulsing like the heart of some alien god. He pulled the Impala onto the side of the road and darted out with gun in hand, starting toward the source of the light as the screech dwindled into a choked sob. Dean leapt over the ditch as Sam and Dave left the car, and—by the time the hunter hit the ground, Dave was at least a dozen feet ahead, hardly seeming to have passed through the intervening space, cloak flaring behind him and a great white sword in his hand.    
By the time Dean stumbled gasping through the door, the kid was nowhere to be seen. Hallway, hallway, kitchen… something moved in the corner of his eye. All at once, the obsidian light swelled, searing his eyelids for a moment before-- it hurt? Why the hell did it--  
“Dean!” The light bloomed like greedy licks of fire across his skin, enveloping his mind in a rapturous clarity of pain. "Dean! Get out of the light!" A jerk to his elbow dragged him out from in front of the doorway. Sam stood behind him, fingers pressed white against the wall. In the shade of that precious wall, the light was only mildly painful, leaving the hunter’s skin lightly singed instead of smothered in the excruciating sharpness which apparently accompanied it at such close range. A moment passed as the light intensified, then subsided again. Dean finally had the presence of mind to register sensation properly. He thought for a few seconds before the signal finally made it to his brain. "... Ow."   
Sam smiled uneasily. "You good?"  
Blink. "Yeah. I'm... I'm good."  
After a pause, Sam's eyes widened. “Dave.” His face was stricken. “Dave was caught out in that, that lethal light or whatever it was.”   
It felt like a punch to the stomach. That poor kid… “Fuck.” Dean’s head fell against the wall. “Let’s hope we can still save his friend, at least, and take out whatever did this.”   
They waited one minute, two in terse silence, but after only one more flare, the deadly light stopped pulsing back into existence. Guns at the ready, Sam peered around the corner. 

 

The room probably had wood in it somewhere, but Sam couldn’t pinpoint exactly where. Instead, a viscous sort of black ink coated it from floor to ceiling, except for a few small patches coated in glossy red scribbles. Crouched in the center was… Dave? A white-haired figure in a dark red cloak stood hunched over a chair, in any case, occupied by some sort of grey… thing. The sword, once again, was nowhere to be seen, but the shadows on the edges of the room twisted as Sam stared at them, looming above the boy. The room was eerie in utter silence broken only by Dave's quiet, stuttering breaths as he futzed with the figure in the chair. The boy's head shot up when Sam took a tentative step into the room. "Sam? Dean?”   
Sam breathed a sigh of relief. “Dave!” he began picking his way across the slick darkness which coated the floor, Dean only half a step behind him. “That light, you weren’t hurt?”   
A hollow laugh left the teenager’s throat as he turned back to the chair. “I’m pretty fucking familiar with it already.” He bent to pick something up. A black bowl the size of his palm, crusted with something candy-red—with a frown of disgust, Dave hurled it across the room. Clatter. He knelt, fumbling with the bonds which held... that wasn’t Karkat. Sam’s eyes widened.     
“Dave…”    
The creature was grey, its black-bristled head lolling limply down. A pair of candy-corn horns sat atop his head, dull and dirty, contrasting with his plain black sweater and the steely cancer zodiac symbol it displayed. His skin was really more chitinous leather than skin, his ears furred and shaped more like a cat’s than a human’s, though still nailed to the sides of his head rather than the top. A set of dark red slits lined what was visible of his neck beneath the torn top of his sweater, shifting faintly with the creature’s breath—gills, maybe?    
“Dave that isn’t human, get away from it!” Gun up, Sam froze in place. The creature looked to still be unconscious, hopefully the teenager would get the message through whatever… whatever that horrible light did. It must have been the creature emitting it, somehow, he—   
“Leave them alone.”   
A figure coalesced from the shadows behind them, darkness and light incarnate, hair glowing white for a moment before it settled on their, no, her shoulders. Her eyes were multifarious, radiating a darkness beyond comprehension until the hunter squinted and they resolved into a mere two eyes, in a pale lilac shade. The cheerful sun emblem which painted her dress and forehead was recreated in the blaze of her hair as it lifted itself in tendrils about her head. The dress seemed like it was made of pure shadow, fading along her torso from ominous grey to bright orange, and her feet dissolved into smoke as they left the depths of her dusky skirt.    
Bang! Dean’s hands trembled as the bullet lanced from his gun. Air hugged from the woman's lungs as she jerked into the wall, a plume of black ichor blooming from the wound, but she gave no indication that it had actually done significant damage. Before the woman, no, creature could put a hand to the bullet hole, a swarm of insectile buzzing escaped. Flies? The hunter licked his lips, fear knotting in his gut. The creature hissed with a rushing of static as it pressed a lilac-nailed hand to the injury, healing it instantly. Dean squeezed the trigger again, bang, bang—and the touch of cool steel at his throat froze the hunter in place.   
A familiar voice drawled in his ear. “Look man,” Dave said from where he seemingly materialized about an inch behind Dean. “I get it. You see something you don’t know, you get scared. You see an emissary of horrorterrors in all her weird fucking half-human splendor, you freak out. Horrorterrors tend to have that effect, I guess, that’s why they’re fucking called that. But your first reaction to something you don’t understand shouldn’t just be to shoot it.” He turned around, dragging Dean with him toward the wall to gaze at where Sam stood white-knuckled and staring at them, and where the creature drooped in a puddle of red. “You see that kid? The grey dude who’s bleeding all over the fucking floor?”   
Dean swallowed, careful of the strange milky sword which threatened to part the skin of his neck like butter. “Yeah man,” he finally said, staring at his brother. Kid? Seriously? Either it had Dave enthralled pretty damn well, or... he winced away. Dave was weird, sure, but he couldn't just be in league with the monsters. He couldn't-- he was just a kid! Well, teenager.   
“His name is Karkat. The eldritch chick with the bright black light is an older version of my sister Rose, and I am totally fuckin disappointed in her for getting back involved with those terrifying things, does she seriously not remember what happened last time?”   
Dean blinked. “You’re crazy.” Obviously, he added internally, because Karkat is a fucking human, not a grey-skinned monster with furry ears. The sword tightened at his throat, and Dean bit back a squeak. Maybe Dean shouldn’t have called the weird as fuck boy in a red costume crazy while he was in the middle of threatening to kill him eminently with a sword, upon reflection that seemed like a pretty terrible move. Even if said teenager apparently felt comfortable enough in this _literal hostage situation_ to throw shade at the eldritch abomination he thought was his sister.   
“Whatever makes you happy, Dean, seriously, you want that apple pie you go for it, but your assumptions here have got literally nothing to do with reality except that they’re trying to imitate it but totally falling on their faces. They’re like fucking Elvis, trying to imitate the real bluesy sound with their own succulent twist and without actually being qualified to sing that shit, except your assumptions aren’t nearly so much of a pop culture icon and can’t dance if it would win you 413 million boonbonds." Boonbonds? Dean thought. What the fuck were boonbonds? "Not that they would win you shit in any case, because—fuck, forget it man.” A long-suffering sigh rose against his back. “You’ve got two options here. One,” Dave spoke a little louder, catching Sam’s eye in his mirrored gaze. “Number one, you settle your shit for a while, you sit back and stop threatening to shoot people while I explain the basics here. Or two, the obviously worse option for you, unless you have something against knowing secret shit I guess, but that wouldn’t make sense for a couple of people who know about werewolves and stuff, like I don’t think the general populace here does—anyway, number two, you don’t settle your shit, and Rose wipes both of your memories and arranges for Jade to come pick you guys up and drop you off back at the diner or something. Apparently Rose can do that now, perks of allying with reality-eating monsters which inhabit the infinite void.”   
The woman’s deep emerald lips perked up. “Dave, they hardly devour reality at all, you know. They’re the ones responsible for all our dead friends still existing, after all.”   
Dave rolled his eyes with a faint smirk. “Nope. Devouring worlds, totally what happens. Anyway,” he continued, voice tense. “you guys had better pick one.”   
Dean scowled, shooting his brother a glare. “You aren’t exactly giving us much of a choice here—”    
A idea visibly sparked in Sam's face. He glanced at the teenager holding his brother captive. Locked eyes with the omnipresent black shields of the kid's sunglasses. “Let Dean go.” Sam turned his gun to the chair where the grey thing drooped, pink saliva and brighter red mixing to slip from its matte black lips onto its dirty shirt. The room fell silent. “Let him go, or I shoot and your monster friend dies.”   
Rose’s glow darkened in sullen fury, dripping viscous from the very walls. “Do so, and I assure you that both you two and Bobby will perish in gibbering terror at my hands, regardless of whatever bargain I may have made and regardless of the good you debatably do for the human population of this continent.”   
Sam narrowed his eyes. “We’re hunters. If you really think we’ll die that easily—”   
“And I’m the emissary of eldritch horrors.” Rose glared. “You can hardly assume I’ll be easier to kill than yourself—”    
"This isn't a fucking competition! None of us want to die, obviously, so can we just--"    
There was a rustle of wings as the trenchcoat-clad angel appeared, standing calmly between Sam and the creature. "No-one will harm the Knight of Blood." Castiel's hands were relaxed, raised in front of his chest as if to calm a wild animal. There was silence.   
"Cas," Dean sighed. "What the hell are you talking about?"  
The angel's eyes bored into the hunters. "No-one will harm the Knight of Blood. I will not allow it, for he is a hero more ancient than life itself, so ancient even Metatron cannot recall how he came to be, and if the hero has survived thus far there must be a reason for it. He is still the same nervous, injured child you picked up on the side of the road just as he was even then an ancient god from beyond the void. You must not kill him. I hate to understate this, Dean," his eyes turned pleadingly to Dean, "and I'm sorry, but that would be  _very bad."_    
Sam glared, gun lowered once more, now that the angel stood between them. "An alien god hero that got clawed and later kidnapped by a werewolf. Yeah, right. Cas, you were tricked."  
"What do you see in me?" The question came suddenly from right behind Dean's ear. Dave tilted his head at the angel, pose forcibly relaxed, eyes hidden under the same shining black shutters as always.   
Cas tilted his head. "You cannot seem to be touched by my abilities. I am not quite sure what to make of this." His gaze flickered back to Sam. "But I know perfectly well I was not tricked. I suspected it at first, of course, that this unfamiliar entity might be... false, given how badly he reacted to my presence. Yet it was my own abilities, and sacred artifacts held in mystery by my brothers and sisters which told me what he was. Not him. How could he lie, if he were not involved?" He let out a breath. "Sam, Dean, please. Let Karkat go."  
"This. Isn't. Karkat." Sam growled. "Seriously, why do you people keep mistaking this  _creature_ for--"  
"Fucking shit!" Dave gave a manic grin, not loosening his sword from Dean's neck. "I get it. I get why you people are freaking out. You don't have trolls here, do you? Like at all, not even as weird supernatural rarities like the werewolf." Four confused pairs of eyes fell on the teenager. " _That's_ why Rose and TZ gave them all the necklaces, I assumed it was just in case we arrived later, so that nobody recognized us or some shit but no! You don't have trolls, so just like if Harley walked around with her dog ears out, if the trolls weren't disguised, you guys would do the sensible thing and flip the fuck out on sight. Am I right?"  
Rose narrowed her eyes. "Strider. If I didn't know you, I might actually understand your confusion. But you seriously didn't figure that out until now?"  
"Well no," the teenager laughed bitterly. "I don't know shit about this universe, if you recall. We killed the bad guys, Batterwitch, Jacks, presumably LE and whoever else too, and Jane patched up Dirk and everybody else who died. We had our huge-ass uncomfortable reunion as one massive team but basically just chatted a little in pairs and small groups because who the fuck wants to talk to all like twenty of us. You and TZ muttered to each other, then handed out the bling, and John opened the door." Dave's smile took on a pointed demeanor. "And then, unbeknownst to everybody but the fucking seers, apparently, there was a blinding green light and I was in a forest. Alone."  
The eldritch abomination from the dawn of time blinked. Her shadowy light faded, coalescing into the smaller shadows of her person, and her skin shifted back from grey to smooth brown. "You didn't--"  
"All I'm saying is that it would have been nice to know that I was going to end up stranded in the middle of nowhere with my boyfriend in mortal danger, shifted out of the correct time in a world that's totally fucking oblivious to literally everything my life has been for the past three and a half years!" With a quick, one-handed gesture, Dave summoned a pair of timetables to float on either side of him. He made a motion with the free hand as if to spin the record nestled in its divet, and Dave flickered out of existence to reappear in two places, one continuing to hold Dean hostage, the other a few feet away. The new Dave strolled across the room, picking up a crimson-smeared teal amulet from its resting place on the charred patch of floor which presumably used to be the summoner's body. He tossed it to Castiel. "Here. Put this on him, it'll make him look human again."  
The angel caught the amulet in one hand, turning from the hunters to rest it back around its owner's neck.  
No longer was the creature grey and horned. A perfectly human teenager slumped in the chair instead, bruised and filthy, a hole gaping red in his left shoulder, darker stains crusted along his torn sweater. "See?" The new Dave leaned back against the air. "Still the same furious damsel in distress as before, just unconscious."  He pulled out the time tables, frowned for quick second, and disappeared. 

 

  
Dean spluttered, trying not to twitch too much against the teenager's renewed grip. "What just happened?"  
"You can... clone yourself?" Sam demanded.   
"I can time travel." Dave retorted. "And it's way the fuck less useful than you think it is. Are you going to fucking listen now?"  
Cas lowered his hands. "Please do this, Dean. Sam. Or at least leave them to go about their business."  
"Everybody knows your thoughts here, Cas." Sam glared daggers at the angel. "You were tricked."  
"I am an angel of the Lord, and his true form is revealed to me. I cannot describe to you precisely what I saw, but the being I saw was great and red and blinding-- and ancient beyond all knowing, with caring embedded in its core and infusing its every drop." His eyes met Dave's for a moment before falling to the hunter's. "Karkat was strong, and, and steady, a bastion of fury and forgiveness." He hesitated. "I cannot fully reveal Dave's form, for as I said my power cannot touch him, but he is of a brighter red, and seems to flow in timeless unity. He too is devoted to the protection of his people as far as I can tell, his people of whom you are two." Cas shifted uneasily.  
"What about our so-called friendly eldritch abomination here?"  
The angel winced. "I cannot touch her."  
The eldritch abomination gave an interested hum, and Castiel turned to her, gaze flickering to her coolly smiling lips. He blinked, eyes fluttering, and flinched away after a moment to stare at the ink-coated floor instead. "She is bright, and black, she is sharp, and soft, living and dead. She is much less intense to look at now than she was when I first came, probably because of the more human form. She feels much like Karkat in some ways, with the same sort of power and deadly caring. She is also colder than anything else I have ever encountered, as if there were a second intelligence within her, embedded in the oceans of darkness. There is a sun within her, which seeps into every cranny, a light which can see all. There is a shadow obscuring her power, her understanding, but which fills her vessel with the strength to act. If it seems like I can describe her further than I can the others, it is only because she is defined by contradictions, and I can at least perceive the most extreme of contrasts though I cannot parse the middle ground." He let out an agitated breath. "The strongest principle which fills that fuller form is the all-consuming need to understand, at nearly any cost." His wings shifted, shimmering just out of visibility as he continued. "Or at least that's what illuminates her brighter core. I cannot interpret the rest of what I saw into something a human could understand, even to the extent that _I_ understand what I saw." Cas licked his lips. "Now that you know as much as I can show you, Sam, Dean, will you  _please_ stop threatening the alien gods from before the dawn of time?"  
Sam ran a hand through his hair, gun still pointed at the ground. "Gods. You people are alien gods." After a second, he asked the question. "Gods feed on belief, right? That's what I've seen, at least. So how are you gods if no-one believes in you?"  
Dave snorted. "We're not some kind of thought-storing aquifer or whatever, what the fuck gave you that idea? We died for our powers, and apparently now they're expanding or something and even the people who didn't god tier are getting them? Fuck if I know. Either way, belief has literally nothing to do with it."  
"You chose to die so you could have powers?" Sam raised his eyebrows.  
"Screw you, I died because I was shot. And then because I exploded an entire fucking sun, how do you think I built up resistance to Rose's death rays of light?" Dave snapped.  
"So you got yourself shot and/or exploded so you could have powers. See, that still doesn't sound like A-plus morality to me."  
Dave rolled his eyes. "Fine. I got shot because an evil omnipotent dog redirected the bullets from my best friend's machine gun when we tried to keep said dog god from murdering us all. She unloaded the entire clip into my chest instead. I exploded a sun because we were all going to lose aka die anyway and literally everybody I cared about was either dead, presumably permanently, or stuck in that dying universe and Rose and I were fighting over who got the cool, quick, and heroic suicide instead of the eventual they-finally-tracked-me-down-weak-and-starving-in-the-middle-of-nowhere-and-stabbed-me-to-death-or-imprisoned-me-for-the-rest-of-time death, and then some carapacian dude stabbed me and got me stuck with the bomb anyway so our bickering didn't fucking matter anymore anyway. Rose was stabbed by the god dog when she went after it after finding her mom's corpse, which he made, and again when the sun exploded. You guys met Jade, she gave us the coordinates. Jade got herself crushed by an entire moon to save another friend, since he was still unconscious and he hadn't even been able to see the place yet. I guess it was just that fucking important to her, she couldn't bear the thought that John would never even get to see it. Anyway, she was later attacked by a lesser agent with a bomb, and slowly fucking bled to death in the evil god dog's loving arms? I don't know, I wasn't there. I was busy standing around like an idiot, desperately hoping that maybe blowing myself to hell would fix everything, or at least get Jade and John the fuck out of dodge. Karkat only died once, the lucky little fuck, when evil god dog sent his entire planet up in flames and he burned to death with everybody else on it. Okay and all of us died a few more times after god tiering, except Karkat and a bunch of others who never did, but we already had the powers by then.  And Rose and I died a shit-ton more than everybody else but Aradia, cause we were stuck in the center of a literal star and Sburb's a mean little fuck that doesn't bother to resurrect you a little ways away from where you died even if the space where you were is now occupied by continuous explosions." Dave scowled. "So basically, fuck you and your bullshit morality. We didn't become gods because we wanted to, even though seriously who the hell wouldn't take that deal. We became gods because shit hit the fan, shit was fucking shot out of a goddamn cannon into that almighty Godzilla of a never-ending fan, and we actually kinda wanted to be alive at the end of it, if you know what I mean."  
The eldritch abomination-- Rose, Sam corrected, cleared her throat. "Dave, first of all, why the fuck did you just decide to announce a notable portion of our more painful history as a group to the world? I'm not particularly put out, by the way, merely surprised that you would choose to. Secondarily, I do not believe any of us were actually involved in arranging to die upon our quest beds, or our slabs, besides Vriska, and possibly Aradia."  
"They weren't believing jack shit, Rose," Dave tilted his head with an uneasy frown. "Sam wanted details, plus he was being a whiny, jealous about the whole god tier thing and it was annoying the shit out of me."  
Sam let out a bitter chuckle. "Jealousy is so not the problem."  
"Whatever man. Didn't John--"  
"Vriska convinced him to fall asleep on the bed, Bec Noir assassinated him in his sleep."  
"The alphas?"   
Rose frowned. "Cherub candy. You know, that oddly euphoria-inducing-to-think-about lollipop juju which Jane carried? Apparently it's a sort of... mind control or personality alteration drug which allows the user to ignore a number of situations which are typically setbacks. They were even able to bypass the ring of void with it. In any case, all four of them were subsumed by the drug and pranced about in pastel rainbows for a few hours, upgraded their equipment, swore repeatedly to marry each other and have hundreds of children, and eventually passed out on their quest slabs. Upon waking up, I am told they merely sat around and failed to speak to each other for several minutes until their moons were blown up, and them with them."  
"Swore to marry each other?" Dean's voice was dubious, to say the least.   
The ink coating the room seemed to swell as Rose sighed in exasperation. "Because they were high as balls, Winchester."  
"Oh." he swallowed. "I don't suppose any of you have some kind of actual goddamn proof you won't hurt people?" At Castiel's wounded look, Dean gave a shallow sigh himself, steeling himself against the hurt in those cerulean eyes. "Yeah, I know, word of an angel should be enough, Cas. But I don't fucking trust them."  
"Dean... Even if you can't trust them," the angel's gravelly voice intoned. "You really should trust me. They are telling the truth."  
"Fuck, Cas. You can't know that, but... fine. You can let me go, Dave. I won't attack you, or, or... or Karkat. Or your creepy, eldritch whatever-it-is of a sister." For a moment there, cold apprehension still niggled in the hunter's gut in the silence of the inky room until finally,  _finally_ , the razor-sharp edge left Dean's throat, and a bony elbow shoved him toward the center of the room.  
Before he could stagger more than a foot or two, Dave spoke in a voice so steely it could have been used as an ice pick. "Hurt, or even threaten Karkat, or any of the rest of us for that matter, and nobody will ever find your head unless it's on another continent from you body, Dean. Sam, the same goes for you. Got it?" His expression lightened a bit when he smirked. "Unless it's Gamzee. If you can relieve the living world of the weight of that goddamn homicidal clown when literally everything else has failed, feel free to go full speed ahead, go fuckin' supersonic if you can. Seriously, that guy's a menace."  
"Vantas requires medical attention, does he not?" Cas interrupted.   
Dave jumped, worry flashing clearly across his features before being covered up again by his impassive mask of a face. "Fuck! Yes. Yes he does." Dave blurred for a split second. In the time it took Sam to barely blink, he was already kneeling by his boyfriend's side. "Okay good, it looks like whoever was responsible for this dealt with the bleeding." He peered under the troll's shirt with a worried frown, noting the ugly reddish-purple bruises which bloomed across his skin in tortoiseshell patches. "At least with the external shit."   
Rose undulated across the room to float only a foot or two from the chair, peering at the couple of larger gashes, where the troll had likely been bled the most. "I believe my light managed to cauterize his outer injuries, at least. Unfortunately, I do not know what further affect it may have had, particularly given most troll's increased sensitivity to light."  
"Joy." The red-clad teenager's mouth took on a sour twist. "We'd better get him to Jane, I guess. I don't really know what to do for that. I also don't know where the fuck our Jane is."  
"He's an alien," Sam furrowed his brow. "Dean and I won't be much help here."  
"Jane should be more than capable of healing any issues," Rose shrugged. "I can fairly easily locate my version of her, at least, and am now perfectly capable of bringing a couple of others along with me, if they don't mind an uncomfortable-- okay, fine, a potentially nightmarish ride." she admitted. "Dave?"  
The small smirk which graced his lips was full of relief. "Fuck yes." Dave finally pulled his boyfriend from the chair, after untying the last couple of ropes, to settle him as comfortably as possible in his own muscled arms.   
"Then if you're ready..."  
"Wait!" Dean called out. "Wait. One question. R-Rose? That's your name, right? Rose. Why the hell are you even here? What happened?"  
The eldritch woman blinked, turning back to face him again, her lips gently curved in a serene smile. "Years in the past, though not very many, a woman's beloved was changed to a werewolf. Perhaps a few months ago, the werewolf died." A faint stream of lazy black gas seemed to issue from Rose's lips as her smile widened slightly. "Several hours in the past, the woman acquired the last ingredient required to summon an ancient eldritch god, known among those who know about such things for her patronage of lovers and monsters, as well as a tendency to  _not_ always devour the entire world when let loose." Unnaturally purple eyes met the hunter's, placid as an underground pool. "Mere minutes ago, the woman succeeded. Mere minutes ago, she made a pact. Mere minutes ago, the entity she summoned personally tore apart every living creature which was neither Karkat nor on the actual road in a car. Mere minutes ago, the woman was slowly peeled from her mortal shell and totally, utterly destroyed so that she might rejoin her beloved." She tilted her head. "It was exactly what both of them wanted from the exchange."

 

With that, Rose dissolved into a heavy black fog, engulfing her brother and the unconscious troll in his arms. A loose head formed briefly near the top of the cloud, turning the pale lilac glow in what was probably meant to be eye sockets on the pair of hunters. A slit parted near the bottom of the head in vague mimicry of a mouth, widening every second until it wrapped eerily around the entire form. "I don't believe you need my help predicting the next couple actions of the eldritch abomination in question," came the woman's echoey alto voice. "given that you were already told her plans." The mouth slot widened further in the ebon cloud, splitting it back into the main mass of colored gas. A smell of incense and old moss overpowered all noses for a few seconds as the cloud swirled, accompanied once again by the rush of static. Condensing abruptly to cling like fluffy coal to Dave and Karkat, the three of them disappeared.    

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, comments and/or kudos are greatly appreciated. May you all enjoy the awesomeness that is Rose being creepy, and I hope at least a few of you folks enjoyed this fic. It is now, by the way, literally the longest thing I have ever finished and I am *so happy* about that, you would not believe. So, yeah. Thank you all so much for reading.  
> Peace!  
> \- Wander/Artent


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